


Phoenix Force

by Blue_Hood



Series: Power Prompts [15]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27691582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Hood/pseuds/Blue_Hood
Summary: Expansion of Chapter 55 of What Superpower Should Tony Stark Have?What if the portal in Avengers 1 closed with Tony still on the other side? What if he faced Thanos alone? How could he win? Could he win?
Relationships: Carol Danvers/Tony Stark
Series: Power Prompts [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986601
Comments: 13
Kudos: 24





	1. Thanos

Tony faced Thanos without fear, he actually sought out the Mad Titan with the help of an old friend: Carol Danvers. Tony looked at the man who tortured Loki and terrorized the galaxy, he saw all Thanos of Titan was and he was not impressed. Looking at the tyrant with an impassive expression, Tony thought _Showtime._ In a burst of cosmic flames, creating the infamous visage of the Phoenix around Tony Stark, Thanos was no more. The Phoenix remained in control as Tony culled his enemy's forces with the help of Captain Marvel. Afterwards, they took Nebula prisoner aboard Carol's ship since the cyborg had a chance of overcoming her past, as her sister Gamora had, according to the Phoenix. Carol asked "You good?"

The Phoenix had just relinquished control, "Yeah." Tony got along with his immortal other half and they both recognized he was better suited to handle some things while the Phoenix was better suited for other things. They dropped Nebula off with the Nova, Captain Marvel handling the exchange and delivering the intel the Phoenix had recovered while Tony forwarded the latter to everyone of Carol's contact list, declaring open season on the tyrant's empire. When Carol returned, Tony asked "We done for the day?"

"Yes, I think we are. Let's get out of here." They flew to empty space away from inhabited worlds where nobody would bother them, their usual haunts. Tony Stark and Carol Danvers, the Phoenix and Captain Marvel, a match made in heaven.


	2. Earthbound

Tony managed to use the remnants of his old suit to connect to the War Machine armor "Miss me?"

"Tony?"

"Hey, I need a place to land. Can you arrange something discreet?"

His friend's voice sounded rough, even through the crappy connection, "Yeah."

They touched down outside the old Stark Mansion, "What happened? What'd I miss?"

"Where were you?" asked Pepper.

"Pep, how are you? How's the company?"

She slapped him, "Where were you?"

"In space. I would've come back, would've fallen right back down to Earth but Widow closed the portal before gravity could do its thing."

"You had no problem getting back when you wanted to."

"I nearly suffocated, heart nearly gave out several times, almost died on over a dozen different occasions. Pep, coming back was no small feat and once I got to the point where I could, there was something I had to do first. I owed it to everyone who died helping me, I made a promise and I had to keep it. Plus, there was a transition period."

"Transition period," inquired Rhodey, who had been talking with Carol. "What happened Tones? Where's the Arc Reactor?"

"At one point, it was worth more than me. I really don't want to talk about it but the long and short of it is I'm not human, not just human anymore. I am also the host for something called the Phoenix Force, really long story." Tony's feet left the ground and the Phoenix made itself visible, a vision of a flaming bird surrounding its host. Landing, he said "That, my friends, is the short version."

Pepper had sort of calmed down by then "The company is fine. After the reading of your will, JARVIS informed Happy, Rhodey and myself of the plans you made against SHIELD. We implemented them, SHIELD is no more and Ross is serving life for the crimes he committed in pursuit of the Hulk. Your timing is impeccable, the UN is currently working on Enhanced rights. Fury's Avengers more or less went down with SHIELD. The Director attempted to escape by faking his death but he couldn't change his appearance fast enough for JARVIS to fall for the charade. There are some more things we should discuss but first, let's head inside."

Tony started to follow then stopped "You were hurt."

"That Phoenix Force is pretty handy. Aldrich Killian, an old colleague of mine convinced himself you were alive and responsible for some great tragedy in his life, he believed that Rhodey and I were the key to drawing you out. Bruce was thankful for our work in taking down Ross, he and JARVIS used Killian to return the favor."

Tony nodded and stopped her from going inside "Let me fix that for you." His eyes flashed fiery red and Pepper felt a tingly sensation all over her body before his eyes changed back "Better?"

A moment later Pepper let out a breath, "A little, I guess. Killian was trying to tick you off and JARVIS is very efficient, I wasn't hurt much."

Rhodey said "I haven't been able to use the War Machine armor since Killian's people messed with it. You're lucky I got your message."

Tony said "The com, right. Uhm, I'm gonna be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to be back in the public eye. If there's one thing about space that I enjoyed, for the most part, it was the anonymity. I might go through with the legal resurrection so I can help you out but if you got a good thing going, I'd like to keep it that way."

Carol said "I have some people I need to check on and I told Tony that I'd introduce him to them."

Pepper looked between them then a look of relief came over her, "You're together?"

"Yeah. Carol has powers too, just FYI." Carol lifted into the air, charging her fist to let them see her own glow. "She knew Fury back in the day, apparently he was not always a bastard."

"Oh no, he was but he seems to have gotten worse over the years."

"Agreed." Pepper and Rhodey herded them inside to bring them up to speed on Earth matters.


	3. Rambeau

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony meets Carol's family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Tony's hair, think Thor Ragnarok without the paint

Deciding to be a responsible adult, Tony had JARVIS check that Maria and Monica were still living where they'd been living last time Carol was on Earth. Maria was but Monica was all grown up and had moved out. Tony encouraged Carol to call and arrange a reunion, eventually wearing her down. Monica and Maria were both surprised to see Tony Stark land on their lawn beside Carol, although his hair was cut strangely. "You were serious about Tony Stark hacking my phone."

"Yeah," answered Tony, not liking when people talked about him like he wasn't there. Carol's Starforce uniform opened many doors, often on planets that did not recognize him as a person, much less a free man. Slavers looking to control the Phoenix liked to hide out on those planets. Carol looked at him, opening her mind to talk privately, but he assured her he was fine for now and she turned back to her family.

Tony felt more like a third wheel than a non-entity in the Rambeau house. He paid attention to the conversation between Carol and Maria, piping up when appropriate, but he also felt for Monica who was almost ignored. Rather than keep lurking, Tony turned to the young woman "Carol talked about you all the time."

Shelving that, the young woman asked "How'd you two meet?"

"Long story short, she saved my life many times. Partly by wearing a Starforce uniform and scowling."

"I can see that," said Monica with a big grin. Tony asked her to show him around and catch him up, offering to trade stories of his alien adventures for stories of Aunt Carol. After they left the room, Maria and Carol calmed down and had a real conversation. Not unlike what happened with Tony and Pepper, first came anger and arguing then calm, adult conversation.


	4. Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony visits Bruce and Carol visits Nick

Carol was riled up, she had finally gotten clearance to see Nick Fury and suffice to say, she was not happy to see the man she had once called a friend but she needed to pay him a visit nonetheless. Tony had gone mute, a defense mechanism he had developed before they met because human voices were grating to some aliens. His mind was not silenced, of course, they could still communicate but his muteness always startled her back to her senses. He apologized for not being able to join her, he did not want to risk his anonymity and he had a friend of his own to drop in on. Without saying a word, he put her in a good mood that lasted just through breakfast in their loft.

Tony had decided to wait until he actually needed a haircut to change his look, enjoying how different he looked from his old self and the security that brought even if someone let it leak that he had been legally resurrected. JARVIS had not agreed with his choice entirely but it did not take him long to convince his oldest friend that this was a good thing, although he might have made it seem like he was doing this whole anonymity thing for Carol which was partly true if not to the extent he implied. Either way, he was able to pass through security without anyone giving him a second glance once he arrived at the Tower and he went up to Dr. Bruce Banner's laboratory. "Knock, knock." His voice had only changed slightly from long stretches of disuse but he could see Bruce made the connection.

"That's not possible." Tony stepped fully into the room. "How could you be here?"

"Turns out the wormhole took me way out of the way, middle of nowhere really and the nuke did not help me get home. In fact, I just got back less than a month ago but Pep agreed to let me keep playing possum as far as the public is concerned."

"You're really here, alive?"

"Yes, I am." Tony's eye caught on Bruce's wedding band, "You and Betty?"

"Uh," Bruce followed his gaze, "Yeah. Listen, Tony,"

"I just wanted to let you know I'm alive and back on Earth, although the second one might change as I am currently involved with an intergalactic hero, we're partners and more than friends if you catch my drift but now that the threat to the planet is gone, we're going to spend more time here on our home planet."

"What threat? Who are you with Tony?"

"Thanos the Mad Titan, an intergalactic warlord who was obsessed with halving the population of the universe, sent Loki to retrieve the Tesseract and sent the Chitauri to help him conquer Earth as payment. Loki defied him, he set us up to win and risked his own neck to do it. As for your second question, her name is Carol Danvers, she's better known as Captain Marvel and actually the source of the Avengers' name. In the Air Force, her callsign was Avenger. She met Fury in the 90s and I guess he liked her because he named his initiative after her. Long story, not mine to tell. How are you, Bruce? Pepper mentioned taking down Ross. Everything good?"

"Yeah, everything is pretty good. How did you survive?"

"Uh, long story. Lemme start from the beginning, the part you know."

Meanwhile, Carol wore her military dress uniform to her meeting with Fury. "Nick."

"Carol."

"What the hell, Nick?"

"You're going to have to be more specific."

Trying to knock him off balance, Carol asked "What lies do you tell people about your eye?"

"I don't tell them an alien cat scratched it out. Were you really expecting me to go around spreading that truth?"

"What do you tell people?"

"That I lost it to betrayal or in a fight, I think I've mentioned a grenade or an explosion a few times. Does it really matter?"

"What matters is you've become just like Yon-Rogg. You are not the man I used to call a friend, not anymore. I just want an explanation."

"Things happen."

"Did you always lie about your eye?" Fury knew better than to lie to Carol so he nodded mutely. Carol stood up "Where's my pager?"

"In Hell's Kitchen." He gave the address and Carol left without another word, blasting off to retrieve the pager.


	5. Avengers Initiative

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick Fury once said, "There was an idea, Stark knows this, called the Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of of remarkable people to see if they could become something more. To see if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could."  
> Let's actually do that

Carol sat with Rhodey going through profiles from the old SHIELD Index. She and Tony had told the UN a few war stories to get more Enhanced representation in the Accords' drafting process. The UN had also given the green light to launch a new Avengers Initiative, on a few conditions. One of those conditions was that all candidates had to be consenting adults given full disclosure on what they were signing up for, that was basically a boon. Another condition was that the team had to be international, they had to recruit and operate internationally instead of being an American team. That was more difficult but a boon was given to help with that, in the form of access to the Index. The UN also had ideas about criteria for the team, members had to be of sound mind and body, meaning they had to pass physicals and undergo psych evals. Full disclosure, on the part of the recruits, was not required. After hearing how much anonymity helped Tony, the UN agreed to include it in the Accords but there was a trade-off, they needed a way to identify the Avengers who chose to remain anonymous but that was simple enough given most were Enhanced and there was very little overlap when it came to superpowers. Some of the tech that was going into the Avengers' armor would be geared towards identification to verify authenticity, meeting that requirement set by the UN.

After the UN set their terms, the Avengers Initiative was well on its way to being relaunched with greater transparency. Carol and Rhodey needed to find some recruits they could make contact with to offer membership before the UN announced the new Initiative under the Accords, which were both works-in-progress. Tony joined them after working on the prototype suits, "Got any ideas?"

Carol said, "A few but making the offer will be the trick. We want to do it before the UN makes their announcement so that our candidates won't be blindsided but SHIELD wasn't exactly known for treating supers well."

"And anyone who survived SHIELDRA will be wary of people who just know about their Enhanced status. We wait until after the announcement and we risk hurt feelings or the spokesperson implying our recruits have already signed on. There's a simple solution."

"What's that, Tones?" asked Rhodey.

"Recruit people who already know. You have the War Machine armor, I am not calling it Iron Patriot, that was just stupid. Carol is Captain Marvel, I am Iron Man. Bruce might be willing to join temporarily. I can make Pepper her own suit, which would give a better face to SI's pro-Enhanced stance than a supposedly dead man. Who knows? Maybe Betty knows a few people her father made disappear like the Abomination. The UN wants an Avengers team training for potential alien invasions, they've agreed to grant Avengers their anonymity. I don't even have to go public with my return from the dead to be Iron Man on this team. You could emphasize your MIT degree to explain how War Machine was fixed if it gets out that you're piloting the armor again."

"Right, right but what about the international requirement."

"You need the UN to announce the Initiative before you can approach anyone. They want a team to announce, give them a few signees and let them know you're waiting on their announcement before you cross any borders. You can keep working on your maybe list now and when the time comes, you can start approaching those maybes."

"Alright."

Rhodey stood and stepped out of the room to make a couple of phone calls. Tony joined Carol on the couch and she shared their maybes, her boyfriend giving insights into how to make the approach with some and commentary on others. When Rhodey returned, the three of them went through the Index to sort everyone into nos and maybes. Bruce, Betty and Pepper joined them later to help comb, adding Ross's files to the bunch. They had a team and they had an idea for expansion. Tony said "Once this is off the ground, maybe we could start a youth program to help kids with powers learn control and restraint."

"What's the difference?" asked Betty, feeling stupid.

"Control would be the ability to use their powers effectively, like regulating super strength so you don't hit someone hard enough to total a car. Restraint is knowing when not to use the power, that would be avoiding an overdependence on their power or becoming arrogant because they can do something normal people can't do. Take super speed, an out of control speedster can't stop while a speedster who doesn't practice restraint chooses not to stop, they use their power for everything from commuting to house chores and maybe they lord their speed over other people. Both control and restraint are important to keeping a super safe, SHIELDRA is an excellent example of that."

"You'd need to get the Avengers off the ground first but I can see you getting approval for a Young Avengers program."

"I know, like I said this would come later and we're gonna steal the name Young Avengers."

"Okay."


	6. Wakanda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The UN required the Avengers recruit internationally, let's see how that goes with a certain isolated nation

After the announcement, King T'Chaka of Wakanda approached them about including a couple of Wakandans in the Avengers line-up. He had known about the Initiative prior to the announcement and taken the time to discuss the matter with his council before approaching Major Danvers. "How many?"

"Three." His council approved his son, a sorcerer and a member of the Dora Milaje.

Carol handed him three forms, "Have them fill these out honestly and in a common language if possible, seeing as we don't have Wakandan translators. These forms will be the basis of their membership, assuming they pass all of the UN sanctioned testing."

T'Chaka smiled politely and flipped through the forms, all of the questions were quite basic, there was space to explain complicated powers rather than ask applicants to use simple terms. "Thank you, Major."

T'Challa was confused when his father gave him and Okoye each a packet, instructing the general to choose a member of the Dora Milaje to fill it out. Looking at the packet, he saw it was an application for the Avengers Initiative, which cleared up some of the confusion. His father wanted the Black Panther to join the new Avengers as part of Wakanda's reintegration. T'Chaka explained "The council has approved three Wakandans for this mission. The Avengers are to be Earth's guardians against threats to the whole world. The team must have members from multiple nations but they do not have to accept every applicant nor must they allow anyone to retain membership who does not deserve it." T'Challa understood the deeper meaning, his father was counting on him and two other Wakandans to represent their people before the entire world. To have a Wakandan make the cut then be dismissed would do Wakanda a great dishonor.

"Three?" asked Okoye.

"The council approved the Black Panther, a member of the Dora Milaje and a sorcerer." Did that mean his membership could be transferred to his successor, T'Challa wondered before reminding himself that he had to gain and hold onto Avengers membership for that to be an issue. "I expect neither my son nor whomever you choose will have any trouble filling out the application in English. Major Danvers requested applicants use a common language instead of our own language." He dismissed them both and Okoye left to contemplate her choices, she had to choose one of her people to join an outsider team.

T'Challa had little trouble filling out the application in English, he was an Oxford graduate after all. What he struggled with was the idea of being the Black Panther, Wakanda's greatest protector, and leaving Wakanda to protect outsiders. He supposed the council would not have approved him to join if they were concerned about Wakanda being defenseless.

Okoye chose Ayo to join the Avengers. She was skilled, worked just as well alone as with a team. Okoye believed she could adapt to the colonizers' world while staying true to Wakandan values. The decision was not an easy one but she made it anyway, giving Ayo the form and passing on their king's instructions.

Shuri was a little bit disappointed to find that three Wakandans were applying to join the Avengers and she wasn't even considered for the job. She was only a little bit disappointed because she understood why she was not in the running. Wakanda was not yet ready to come all the way out of isolation and she would have to pretend inferior technology was far superior to theirs if she was to join the Avengers. That was not something she thought she could handle, which is why scientists were not in the running at all. Plus the Avengers would probably only get together to fight or prepare for fights, not something Shuri was interested in.


End file.
